Page 25 of Heartless Heathens

“That is not underwear,” the corner of his lip curled up then quickly flattened out again. “Removethose—” he waved his hands at my underwear, “whatever they are.” I shook my head at him, and he stood up too quickly and I jerked back.

“Pet, I don’t do well repeating myself, so be a good girl andlisten. Can you do that for me?” There was a pseudo-sweetness to his voice that betrayed everything this man exuded.

Not a snake, but a scorpion, waiting for you to come to him versus striking blindly.

I pulled at the waistband of my underwear, stepping out of the knee length cotton fabric before dropping it to the ground. His face twisted while his eyes stayed fixed on the sight of them on the floor. He drew his gaze back up to my eyes, not lingering nearly as long as his so-called brother did.

“Why are you so dirty?”

“I-I-I w-was in the woods.”

He narrowed his eyes at me like he could see through my attempt to withhold the truth, but it was believable enough that he wouldn’t call my bluff.

“Get in,” he said, tipping his chin down to the tub.

I inched towards it, nervously, taking my time. Before I could get my leg over the tub fully, I fell into the water, splashing so much of it out of the tub and onto him. His nostrils flared but that was the only sign of disapproval he showed.

“Did Frollo send you here?” he asked, using a colorful ball of mesh to scrub my skin with a sudsy soap that smelled like fruits and sunshine.

“No,” I told him, looking right into his eyes hoping he could see the truth.

He seemed appeased.

Father Frollo’s baths were always cold, and the soap didn’t have a smell. This was a stark comparison to what I was accustomed to and once he began to scrub at my legs a noise crawled its way out of me from the depths of my chest and through my throat.

Our eyes met.

I bit my lip between my teeth, pressing my eyebrows together. He let that mischievous curl tease its way out from the corner of his lip again. He was confusing. I’d known him for an entire two hours and found that he could be angry, very angry, and sometimes amused. He pulled his hand out of the bath and rolled his sleeves up further until they touched his elbow.

“If I find out you’re lying to me, Romina,” he said, shoving his hand back into the bath and using the ball of mesh against my most private area forcing a loud gasp from my lips as I tried to back up.

But I was already pressed to the back of the tub, nowhere to run to, and his hand was there, using the sponge to clean me far too intimately. “I’ll fucking kill you myself, you understand?” he asked, moving his fingers in a circle sending a flood of heat down to my core.

I gasped loudly once again, confused yet somehow desperate for more of it.

“I said, do you understand?” he asked, pinching the rosebud shaped mess of nerves between my legs, forcing another surge of pleasure to ripple through my center.

I yelped out a yes with the sizzle of another shockwave, but for a second I wasn’t sure if I was even answering his question, or another one of my own.

“Good girl. Now stand.” Despite how positively terrifying he was, there was something about the way he praised me that filled up something in my chest.

I shuddered, pushing away every vile insult that threatened to surface. They had been permanently welded into my mind over the years by the archbishop.

His efforts at rolling his sleeves were moot, they were soaked nearly to his shoulder now but he didn’t seem to mind. His dark gray pants were drenched in several spots from when I splashed my way in. He held his hand out for me and I took it, despite his most recent threat to end my life.

I believed him.

But I hadn’t lied, so I wasn’t scared.

He pulled me out of the tub and wrapped a towel around me.

“Get some rest, Pet. We have class bright and early tomorrow,” he said, not hiding the resentment in his voice.

“We?” I asked, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.

“Yeah, we. I’m not leaving you to snoop through our things. I don’t know what your deal is, but I don’t trust you. You can play the innocent little virginal girl that Frollo coached you to be before he sent you here to tempt us, but it does nothing for me.” His eyes darkened to a stormy blue and I shrunk back, wrapping the towel around me tighter.

“Father Frollo doesn’t want me in class with the other students,” I trembled out with a shaky voice.